DC Government

Photo by PoPville flickr user BrennaLM

“Dear PoP,

I got really strange request from my friend. She sent an email to our circle of friends asking if a lesbian couple she knows can use someones DC residence for their wedding ceremony. She said the marriage officiant just needs to be able to use my address for the marriage license. I’m a Columbia Heights resident and she could probably use my empty second bedroom or the meeting room in my condo. I just don’t understand why they can’t get married at a courthouse. Don’t really know about the gay marriage laws in DC. I’m just wondering if the other DC residents are getting these kinds of request as cheap way to do their nuptials.”

This is bizarre. Anyone know the proper laws here? You don’t actually have to live in DC to get married here do you?

Photo by PoPville flickr user Madame Meow

“Dear PoP,

So we bought our house in the in the Capitol hill area in late 2009, and we just got our 2012 property tax assessment, our second increase since we bought the place. I’m contemplating appealing, but not sure it’s worth the effort, and/or wondering if it’ll do more harm than good.

The current assessment is an increase of about 2.6%, bringing the assessed value up to about 3.6% more than we paid for the place about 1.5 years ago. I’ll admit this seems far from extreme, but when I take a look at Zillow for example, it shows 20002 down ~6% in the last year and “Near Northeast” down ~3.5%. I wander through the occasional open house and look at listings and my feeling about local prices is that they’ve been flat at best, if not slightly down as Zillow suggests.

So do I have grounds for an appeal? Should I bother? Do you have any idea how detailed their analysis really is? Do they actually go street by street, house by house, or do they just apply a percentage for each neighborhood based on some coarse measure?

We’ve made some improvements to our house. One of the neighbors just went through a very serious renovation and their property value has clearly gone way up. In reality mine has certainly gone up too as a result, probably more than the assessment shows, though I think it’s been too recent to actually make its way into this assessment. If I appeal will I end up with more focused scrutiny and end up doing myself more harm than good?”

I thought that it would be a good idea to appeal if your house (in similar condition) was assessed at a much higher value than homes nearby. I once appealed on those grounds a couple of years ago and won the appeal.

We discussed how tax assessment works here and discussed an appeal here and here.

Did anyone else’s assessment increase?

“Dear PoP,

A question to PoPville about how to deal with WASA. Attached is a pic, taken on a *good* day, of our bathtub filled with disgusting water courtesy of WASA. We contacted them a year ago and they came out and tested to make sure it was “safe” to drink (they claim it is). Their instruction to us was to “flush” the lines every day by running all the water at full blast for 10-15 minutes. It just seems to me that an entity which charges me to buy clean water shouldn’t be allowed to tell me I have to buy 100 times more of their product to get it in usable condition. Additionally, the sediment is now causing costly damage to our appliances and tankless water heater. My question is whether there is any chance of having WASA install a whole house water filter on our house, and whether they are required by law to provide us with water that is not dirt brown?”

Hmm, WASA – now My DC Water – has definitely become more responsive. They are particularly responsive on twitter @mydcwater. They can also be reached by phone at 202-612-3440. I know just this Sat. they responded to a twitter query sent to me about the taste of chlorinated water.

But back to the question at hand: Has anyone else experienced brown water like this? If so, how did you resolve it?

“Dear PoP,

In response to last week’s post about newspaper boxes, I found a partial answer. I took these photos of boxes at 18th and H NW. Looks like these boxes are regulated by the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District. Even assuming that all BIDs regulated boxes, that would still leave a lot of boxes that sit outside of BIDs unregulated. From the sign, it looks like the BID asks publishers to sign on to a voluntary agreement regarding maintenance of the boxes. I’m not knowledgeable about first amendment issues, but I believe that since BIDs aren’t government entities (or probably even quasi-governmental), they wouldn’t be subject to first amendment restrictions. And even if they were, the agreement being voluntary might get around that.”

Cool, thanks for following up!

Photo by PoPville flickr user Mr. T in DC

“Dear PoP,

I sold my car that was registered in D.C. to someone out of state. I have the tags, but I’d like to keep them for my personal collection (who doesn’t?)…

On the D.C. DMV site, they imply that while they’d really like the tags, it’s still optional to surrender them (see this line at the bottom of this page:

“You are responsible for any infractions incurred on the tags if you do not surrender them to DMV.”)

However, I just got a notice that my car is due to be inspected again. How do I tell the DMV I need to cancel the car’s registration without surrendering the tags?

If I don’t tell them somehow, then I’m going to get charged late fees, etc.

Any ideas? I’ve tried calling and e-mailing, but I never get to a real person, and there’s no additional information on the site.”

Hmm, I thought when you sell your car and the new owner registers the car then your registration automatically is canceled. Isn’t that how it works? Anyone sell their car and keep the plates? Did you face similar problems?